The Pocket Monster Diaries, Part 13

I appeared to be in someone’s living room, by myself as far as I could tell. I tried to remember the events that led to me crashing on a sofa, but my recollection of last night was like a sloppy oil painting. Which was odd, because I’m not even close to the legal drinking age, but on the other hand, I did stay up way past my bedtime. There had been a big party, and a lot of food, for both me and my Pokemon, but after that…nothing. I sat up groggily, patting down my jeans and trainer’s jacket to make sure all of my belongings were still there. My Pokeballs were empty. A flash of panic: Could I have underestimated those idiots…?

Then I spotted Mr. Suds. He was curled up at the bottom of a large fish tank, bubbles rising lazily to the surface from the corner of his mouth. I shuffled across the carpet, still half asleep, and rapped on the glass.

“Hey! Rise and shine. We’ve got to get going.” He stretched and yawned, sending forth a cascade of bubbles, then stood up gingerly and poked his head out of the water. He regarded me with half-lidded eyes. “Yeah, yeah, I’m sure it’s real comfortable in there, but unless you want to eat fish food for the rest of your life, we’re going to have to leave eventually. And take off those ridiculous-” Oh yeah! He had ears now. “Uh, never mind, actually. Let’s go find your teammates.”

A brief scavenger hunt followed. Vamp was obvious; he was hanging upside down in the closet next to a nightmarish gallery of polyester suits in an array of retina-searing colors. I was clearly the first person to open that particular door in the last few decades or so.

I heart a soft fluttering and looked upward to see JitterBug, resting with her body flat against the ceiling. I say “resting,” but to tell you the truth, I’m not really sure if she sleeps at all.

Moving into the adjacent kitchen, SupaFly was sleeping in a sort of crude nest that she had apparently constructed using some crumpled newspapers taken from a nearby recycling bin, brightly colored bits of yarn, leaves stripped from the potted plant out in the foyer, and half of an extremely unfortunate t-shirt.

Mr. Suds opened the pantry door and found Chuckles inside, cradling a half-empty cereal box, dozing amidst a number of torn open bags of baking ingredients he had evidently been sampling. The floor of the cupboard was completely obscured by spilled sugar, flour, cocoa, and whimsically shaped marshmallows.

I found MurderFish when he leapt with a loud splash over the divider between the two halves of the kitchen sink, both of which had been somehow stopped up and filled with water. I was tempted to just leave him there and hope that someone found him a good home…but I knew that he would probably just wind up as the Friday Night Fish Special at Joe’s Krabby Shack. I put him back in the ball. What can I say, I’m a big softie.

Shortly after locating all of my Pokemon, I heard heavy footsteps from upstairs. At that moment I became highly aware of the food and general detritus scattered around the kitchen, the water that had sloshed out of the fish tank, and the claw marks (or bite marks, or talon marks, it wasn’t really clear) on the furniture in the living room. There had been a lot of people behaving wildly last night, so I wasn’t sure how much of the damage was caused by my Pokemon (or me), but then again, I also didn’t want to find out.

The footsteps sounded like they were moving towards the stairwell.

“Mr. Suds, I think that’s our cue to leave.” I whispered. He nodded and hopped back inside his Pokeball, and I — quietly — headed out the door.

Outside the morning air was brisk and clear. It was still (painfully) early, and the streets were completely deserted. This was my best chance to get to Bill’s house. I quickly crossed the now familiar bridge and started off down the road to Cerulean Cape. I’m not sure if it was because of the unusual hour, or because people were still used to avoiding the “Nugget Bridge”, but I didn’t encounter any trainers on the way. Whatever the reason, I was certainly grateful for the respite after that grueling battle marathon yesterday, and I can only assume that my Pokemon felt the same way.

Bill’s house was a little bungalow at the end of the cape, perched strategically to achieve what was probably a spectacular view of the sparkling ocean inlet that was adjacent to Cerulean. The billowing smoke that the guy from yesterday had mentioned was no longer visible, and the house’s exterior didn’t show any signs of damage, so obviously it had managed not to burn down in the intervening day. Still, as I faced the front door, I got a distinct feeling of foreboding from the silent cottage.

But there might be someone inside who needed my help. And I knew for a fact that G’yorp had left already, so what was there to fear? I turned the knob and stepped inside.

I had to use a musical fight montage just to get here, I'll be damned if I'm going to back down now.

The room was dim, lit only by the sun that filtered in through the eastern windows. It was a mess, but in a decidedly “scientist who is a bachelor/slob” way and not really a “fought for his life with a crazed jungle boy” way. Everywhere there were scribbled-in notebooks, printouts of graphs and tables, scientific instruments both familiar and obscure, and scattered over everything else there was a fine sprinkling of discarded energy drink cans. Either Bill really loved the taste of Red Tauros, or there were a lot of late nights spent working in this lab.

As my eyes grew adjusted to the clutter, I noticed that the room was dominated by a huge machine against the back wall. Every available surface of it was covered with crap, so at first I hadn’t realized that the mountain of stuff was actually concealing a singular object.

There was no sign of Bill himself, however. The room was totally devoid of life, except for…

“…a Clefairy? What are you doing here?”

I've never seen a Clefairy before. Well, I saw something that LOOKED like a Clefairy in Mt. Moon, but I may have been hallucinating at that point, so...I don't think it counts.

“Hey, little fella, are you Bill’s Pokemon? Did you see what happened to him? Can you take me to where he is?”

Damn...I guess it doesn't understand-

Holy-

I recoiled from the Clefairy in horror.

“What the hell are you?”

You're certainly some kind of maniac

“I understand that this is an unusual situation, but I really need your help right now.”

“W-what do you need me for?”

“You’re my only hope of regaining my normal body. I need you to go to that computer over there-”

“Wait, let’s think about this. You’re a famed Pokemon researcher. I’m ten years old. What could I possibly do with a computer that you couldn’t?”

“I can’t activate the teleporter while I’m inside the test-pod. And besides,”

He held out his pink, stubby-fingered arm-nubs.

“Have you ever tried using a computer with these things?”

“…all right, fair enough. What do you want me to do?”

Okay...

Are you sure we can't do this without separating anyone's cells? I kinda like what my cells have going on right now, actually.

Good luck

Bill cleared away a few stacks of paper and discarded pizza boxes, and stepped into the machine.

“Go to the Cell Separation Wizard on the desktop, and follow the instructions. It should be a piece of cake.” His voice was muted by the inch-thick steel enclosure.

I walked over to the computer monitor and tried to make sense of what I saw. He had a lot of applications open, and I certainly didn’t want to mess with the wrong thing by accident. It would look pretty bad if I ended up atomizing the guy I had come here to save.

“Ah, there it is.” The icon was a tiny, pixellated Clefairy, its body partly dissolved into a swirling pink mist. Was I imagining the grimace of distress on its face? Probably best not to think about it too hard. I clicked on it.

I waited for some kind of window to pop up. Instead, a Slowking wearing a wizard’s hat materialized on the table to my left.

"Hello, {UNREGISTERED USER}. Would you like to disassemble an organism today?"

“Ahhhh!” I said.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what an [Ahhhh!] is. Please speak a recognized command, or for general help, say [Help Me!]“

“Bill,” I called over my shoulder, hoping he could still hear me, “what is this thing?”

“Oh, you must be talking about BOSCO.” said the muffled voice from inside the teleporter.

“I need you to take that Clefairy in the teleport pod, and turn it back into a human. Can you do that?”

“My IQ is somewhere in the neighborhood of 5,000, so I should certainly hope so. Besides, Bill has always been a bloody idiot. This is isn’t the first time I’ve had to fix one of his cock-ups for him. Just wait one moment while I-“

Suddenly, the Alakazam flickered and was replaced by a Psyduck.

“Whoa…who are you?”

“Hi, I’m Winston, and you were about to separate Bill’s cells for me.”

“…and who am I? Who is…anybody? Do you even know what a cell, like…is, man? There’s all these little dudes in there…called midichlorians or something.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure you’re thinking of mitochondria, but the point is that I need you to separate-”

“But the thing is, there’s, like, a million of these midichlorians, and they all come from this lady called Midichlorian Eve, and she comes from like, space, or Africa, and it’s like, why do we even have all those little guys in there? Well the reason is, is because…they let you set shit on fire.”

“I don’t think that’s-”

“With your mind, bro.”

Before I could carry our stimulating discussion any further, the Psyduck had already been replaced.

“I AIN’T TOOOOO GUD WIF DA NUMBARS”

“No. I don’t care whose cells they are. I am not talking to this thing.”

“That’s odd, something seems to be wrong with the avatar selection system.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“Probably attributable to human error.”

(I prudently chose to remain silent here.)

“Anyway, I should be ready to revert Bill to human form soon. Give me a moment to calibrate the teleporter to “Stupid Twat” and we’ll be ready to go.”

“Great. How long do you think that will take?”

“…”

“Hello?”

“…”

“Anyone in there?”

“…”

“Is this thing still working?”

“…loading…”

“This is even worse than the Psyduck. Give me something that can talk at least!”

“WOOOOBBA WOBBA!”

“Something that can talk English!”

“OOOOOLD MAAAAAN RIVEEEEEEEER, DAT OOOOOOLD MAAAAAN RIVEEEEEEER-“

“Something that isn’t the most offensive thing ever!”

“KILLRAPESHITFUCKSMASHCRUSH”

“I guess that’s slightly less offensive.”

“SLAUGHTERCUNT”

“…very slightly.”

“WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT, PISSHOLE?”

“Listen, I don’t suppose I could convince you to separate the cells of that Clefairy in there, could I?”

“SUBJECT: THAT FUCKIN’ CLEFAIRY STATUS: PISSING ME OFF RECOMMENDED COURSE OF ACTION: KILL THE SHIT OUT OF IT”

“Please don’t do that.”

I heard a whirring noise from inside the teleporter as some kind of mechanism activated.

“THAT’S THE TEST-POD PURIFICATION SYSTEM.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“PREPARE TO BE SURPRISED.”

The lights of the laboratory dimmed to a dull red and began to pulse in time with an incredibly loud klaxon. An automated voice began repeating,

“Initiating test-pod purification system. Please vacate the premises if you are one of the following: a pregnant woman, a non-pregnant woman, a man, a non-pregnant cyborg or other partially biological construct…”

I faintly heard Bill’s voice over the klaxons: “I don’t remember this happening last time…”

“Okay, that sounds pretty bad.”

“FUCKIN-A IT DOES. GENERALLY CAUSES TOTAL PROTONIC REVERSAL IN UNDER 30 SECONDS”

“I’m going to give you one more warning.”

“BITCH, I’M INTANGIBLE. YOU CAN’T DO SHIT.”

“Then I’m going to have to ask you to enable the ALM Module.”

“YOU KNOW WHAT? I’LL FUCKIN DO IT. I DON’T SEE WHAT THAT’S GOING TO-“

All hell broke loose. An indescribable noise emerged from the machine.

Once I had recovered from that ear-raping death shriek, I noticed that the projector was now cycling between the various avatars at breakneck speed.

“Nice going-“

“FUUUUUUUU-“

“…loading…”

“WOBBA!”

“-you-“

“HURF”

“-UUUUUUUU-“

“-duuuuuuuude-“

“-tosser!”

“ZIP-A-DEE-DOO-DAH-“

“…thank you for your patience…”

Then, the device shut off and went completely silent.

This time I really was afraid I’d broken it. For several seconds I stared at the projector, willing it back to life. Finally, it flickered back on, defeated but barely functional. The voice was slow and unnaturally deep.

Lights and gauges began to flash, and a deep, vibrating hum pervaded the room. There was a small poof from the teleporter. The projector shut down, maybe for the last time. The door to pod 2 opened in a cloud of steam and a human Bill walked out, fully clothed.

I was about to ask him how the cell separator could affect inorganic matter…but then I decided that I had already spent enough time in his lab for today.

“Please, it was nothing. I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“No thanks to that kid who came in here yesterday.”

“Kid?” Could this be my lead after all? “What happened?”

“I was calibrating some sensors inside the test pod, when this delinquent burst into my lab! He started hooting and banging around, and he must have started the testing protocol by accident. The teleporter started going crazy and smoking, and before you know it, poof! I was a Clefairy. The pod doors locked during the test, of course, so I didn’t get a good look at him, but-”

“No, if he was hooting, it must be him.”

“You know this guy?”

“Sort of. He’s from my hometown. I’ve actually been trying to find him to keep something like this from happening.” I gestured expansively at the ransacked lab.

“Actually, ah,” he glanced around at the wreckage, “most of it was like this already. In fact, as far as I can tell, the only thing he disturbed was this.” Bill walked over to an old cardboard box that had been overturned, spilling its contents onto the floor. He righted it and started to replace the gew-gaws that had fallen amongst the floor’s native debris. I was impressed that he was able to distinguish the two.

“What’s that?”

“This?” Bill held the box at arm’s length and scrutinized it, as if my question had made him consider it for the first time. “This is…wow, this project is pretty old. You’re, what, nine, ten? I bet you weren’t even born when I started on this. It was my first ever project for the Pokemon League back when I was a grad student. Here,” he picked up a grey, plastic lump from the floor and handed it to me. “Look familiar?”

The object was about four inches across, cut into an octagonal shape, and completely featureless.

“Not…especially.” I hefted the thing in my hand. It weighed nearly a pound. “What’s it for?”

“It’s a badge!”

“Are you kidding me?” Now that he mentioned it, there was some crude resemblance to my Boulder Badge, but still… “You really expected people to lug eight of these things around with them? All the time?”

“Well,” he said, taking it back and replacing it in the box, “these are prototypes of course. Just to get the League’s attention. It costs a lot of money to mass produce badges, you know. The final version was much more svelte, and I’m sure they’ve added all kinds of bells and whistles since then.”

“But hasn’t the league always had badges? Why would they need new ones?”

“The earliest badges were just little chips of plastic, wood, etc. Astonishingly easy to counterfeit. These babies,” he rattled the box, “and the ones they use now, have RFID chips inside ’em. Each one has a unique identification number that gets synced with your trainer ID when you win it from a Gym Leader, so you can’t just set up a factory to pump out fake Thunder Badges or whatever. They also keep track of win/loss records, what kinds of Pokemon you use in your team, which Pokemon centers you’ve visited recently…all sorts of stuff. The League has a pretty extensive database on every registered trainer.”

“Wow…” I slipped out my badge case and opened it. The Boulder Badge was still sitting where I had put it, snug in its velvet indentation in the upper left corner. “I had no idea.”

“I still don’t know why your friend would be interested in these things, though.” Bill put the last of the badges in the box and lifted it back onto its shelf. “Obviously, the League never actually put them into circulation.”

“I don’t think he cares much about badges anyway. In fact, he ate the first badge he ever won.”

“Who knows, then. Maybe this box just happened to catch his eye. I’m lucky he didn’t take an interest in something that was actually important.”

“I’d better get going if I want to catch up to him. He seems to be visiting all the Gyms, and he’s already hit Cerulean. I don’t want to fall behind.”

“Don’t leave just yet.”

“If you’re visiting all the Gyms in order, you’ll be headed to Vermillion next, right? This should help you out.”

“Thanks!”

“They send me these tickets every year. They try to get lots of prominent figures in the Pokemon world to show up so they can attract more trainers. I went the first time, but the only thing the other passengers want to do is battle. My neighbors would have their Pokemon fight at the most ungodly hours; it was impossible to get any sleep. One night, I was in my cabin when a Machoke punched through my wall.”

“Really.”

“I’m glad they had room service at least, because I couldn’t even walk to the dining room without getting drenched, or singed, or electrocuted. The captain was the worst though. He kept showing up and asking me to give him a back rub…” He shuddered. “You’re a trainer, though, so you might like it.”

“…thanks.” I tucked the tickets away in my bag.

“Anyway, I should probably take a look at BOSCO to make sure that nothing bad happened to him while your buddy was mucking around in here.”

I began sweating instantly.

“Oh, gee, I…I need to leave.

“Are you sure? I’ve got some pictures of very rare Pokemon you might be interested in.”

“Oh, thank you but I’m…very…hungry…so hungry!”

“I’ve got some bagels-”

“Hungry for…BATTLE! Goodbye!”

I bolted for the door and didn’t stop running until I had made it back to Cerulean.

FLEEEEEEE

I leaned against the railing of the Nugget Bridge, panting. When I looked up, I saw a policeman standing in front of a house that I recognized as the one that I had so hastily vacated this morning. With a rising sensation of nausea, I remembered the state of devastation my Pokemon had left it in. They know!

I decided to stroll past as if nothing had happened. The biggest mistake right now would be to look suspicious. It felt like the cop’s eyes were boring holes into my skull, but I knew that was just nerves. I was almost out of sight when-

“You there!”

“Yes, officer, how may I help you on this fine day?”

“You’re the kid that battled a Team Rocket member on the Nugget Bridge, yes?”

“That’s…correct.”

“You haven’t seen any more of those guys around, have you?”

“I…no.”

“I see.”

“…again.”

“Again? Do you mean-”

“I know! Can you believe they had the nerve to break into the same house twice? These poor people just finished putting everything back the way it was, and then they woke up this morning to find the whole first floor ransacked! At least they didn’t take anything this time.”

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